Yet I had not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when I had drawn away from them at the Ferry pier, as though they had been unclean beasts.

No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule.

Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues.

They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.
There was one man, of maybe forty, that would sit on my berthside for hours and tell me of his wife and child.

He was a fisher that had lost his boat, and thus been driven to the deep-sea voyaging.